Harvester
''"Where the Black Death was the Grim Reaper's scythe, this agent will be his combine harvester." ''- anonymous Confederate scientist Harvester was a codename for a series of biological agents engineered by the Terran Confederacy. Harvester-series bio-agents were characterized by their ability to target specific ethnic groups, various strains binding to specific genetic markers exclusive to particular ethnicities. History With the rise of the Terran Confederacy, the manpower disparity between the Confed and their allies of convenience China and India became ever-more apparent. That, as well as the need to potentially suppress massive uprisings in other regions in the future, led the future Emperor of Sidhae to sanction the development of "ethnic bioweapons". The following years of research produced the Harvester plague. It is believed that the codename was coined as a pun on the Grim Reaper and his scythe - "where Black Death was the Grim Reaper's scythe, this new pathogen will be his combine harvester", apocryphal words attributed to one of the Confed scientists employed in the bio-weapons program. Despite it's fearsome name and eventual status as the deadliest disease to have ever struck Mankind, Harvester was not engineered as a weapon of genocide. The Emperor wasn't interested in indiscriminately slaughtering entire populations more than was absolutely necessary to subdue them, and hence opted for an agent of high, but not extreme lethality - the purpose of Harvester was to overwhelm the enemy emergency services and cripple his industries and defenses with the sick and the dying rather than to exterminate them outright. Consequently, the new bio-agent was created to have a 60% case-fatality rate. The agent was to have a fairly long incubation period to ensure it's effective spread, and a rapid progression rate, killing the victims quickly upon the onset of symptoms. It was also designed to be stable in order to avoid random mutations that could allow any specific strain to spread beyond designated target population, thus becoming counterproductive to their purpose. Harvester was unleashed upon the world at the onset of WWIV in 2039, the Gamma and Delta strains being deployed in China and India, respectively. In the next 16 weeks, around 2 billion people perished. The actual casualties of disease number closer to 1 billion, the rest dying of famine, neglect and ensuing civil clashes along with military action. The streets of Indian and Chinese cities are said to have become deserted and littered with decaying bodies much like during the times of Black Death. Confederacy too suffered serious destruction from the nuclear retaliation of the doomed nations, the devastation resulting in serious damage to Terra's ecosystems. After the fall of the Confederacy and the exodus of the first Sidhae, Harvester plague again saw use during the Final War of 2065, enhanced-lethality strains being unleashed upon the world along with a nuclear holocaust. Enhanced versions of the plague were again deployed during the Age of War, and still remain in Sidh and Federation bioweapon arsenals as of today. Contemporary technology has advanced enough to allow the gene-tailoring of this plague even to specific individuals, enabling it's convenient use as a tool of assassination. Overview The Harvester is a chimeric plague, created by splicing the genomes of various deadly viruses. The exact composition of the virus remains classified for obvious reasons, but given it's nature and symptoms, it is believed to be based on H1N1 influenza virus and various exotic hemorrhagic fevers, potentially including the notorious Ebola virus. The H1N1 was chosen as the basis for Harvester because of it's extreme contagiousness, airborne spread capability and it's innate potential deadliness - this subtype of influenza virus was already known for having caused the deadly Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918, killing more people worldwide in a matter of weeks than the Black Death had in a century. The particular strain of H1N1 also had the peculiar feature of being particularly deadly to people in their prime as opposed to young, old and infirm, turning their own immune systems against them. However, due to inherent instability of influenzavirus genomes, additional genes would be spliced in from other deadly but less mutation-prone viruses to stabilize it, and ensure a consistent case-fatality rate. An assortment of viral hemorrhagic fevers came to aid here. Various artificial proteins were added to the virus' genetic structure to allow it to bind to ethnicity-specific genetic and epigenetic markers. Each strain was engineered to target a particular ethnic group, so genetic stability was imperative here, lest the virus mutated out of control. The Harvester would first attack the victim's lungs, multiplying inside them and causing every breath to exhale contagion without any apparent symptoms for around 20 days, ensuring that the infection would spread unnoticed over large segments of the target population. The symptoms would at first manifest as cough, sneezing and moderate fever, no different from ordinary influenza. However, within a day or two, internal hemorrhaging would begin, further aggravated by the body's immune response, eventually leading to death by total organ failure by day 3-5. Around 40% of the infected would survive, albeit be seriously incapacitated for another two months. Survival would grant temporary immunity presumably wearing down over several years, although this was never tested and proven in practice. Harvester virus was designed in numerous strains, each tailored to a specific ethnic group. The ultimate strain that never saw deployment and only existed as a last resort measure was Harvester Omega, an enhanced-lethality strain designed to target all human life indiscriminately. Harvester plague saw widespread use again during the Age of War, it's various strains including the Omega strain being unleashed upon various human worlds at the height of the conflict. Due to the mono-ethnic structure of the Sidh society, Sidhae also proved particularly susceptible to Harvester-derived human bioweapons that were upgraded to overcome their augmented immune systems. In the present day, Harvester-derived bioweapons are retained as strategic weapons, requiring the sanction of an archistrategos or above to deploy. Federation of Mankind maintains a similar policy, requiring the sanction of the Prime Minister.